It has been a remarkable year for the Reach podcast—with incredible guests sharing stories of achievement, research, and marketing insights. Join our year-end review to reflect on how marketers can apply takeaways to their B2B and ABM practices.
Reach had 24 amazing guests this year, including the 57th submitter of Mount Everest Bob Cormack, the driver of Jamaica's Olympic bobsleigh team Dudley Tal Stokes, athlete and artist Gregory Burns, indie rocker Kishi Bashi, and entrepreneur Chris Do. Hear from each of these incredible guests and learn how to unlock the power of account-based thinking with Hiromi, Jaycen, and Garret. Listen now and join the conversation!
[00:00:00] Hiromi: Reach has had a remarkable year with guests contributing and engaging mix of intimate stories, groundbreaking research, and practical marketing insights. In this year end recap, we revisit key takeaways and reflect on how they inform the account-based mindset. Jason, Garret, how does it feel to be wrapping up our 24th episode of the year?
[00:00:20] Jaycen: I've gotta say-
[00:00:21] Garret: I- I can even speak. It's like-
[00:00:23] Jaycen: It's amazing.
[00:00:24] Garret: This endeavor was really something be we, Jason and I, had never done this before, you know? So I feel stretched but not in a bad way, not in like a cheap pair of pants kind of way. Like in a, in a gross, in that I've been pushed to the point where it's like I've grown. And I feel very grateful for that. It's a skill. And maybe I- I hadn't realized, I hadn't valued that skill that other people have of telling stories, having conversations, making comments that aren't absolutely vapid and generalities. It's real, it's really tough, you know? Like it's-
[00:01:03] Hiromi: It is, it's a challenge. And Jason, this has kind of been your brainchild, this podcast.
[00:01:10] Jaycen: I don't know about that.
[00:01:11] Hiromi: Do you wanna just... [laughs] Do you wanna just maybe express what your goals were in starting this podcast?
[00:01:19] Jaycen: I think it, the goal was to go deeper and explore why we do what we do. And how does that influence what we do? Especially as it pertains to this discipline, or this strategic way of thinking about addressing accounts. And I think what this taught me as we were going through it, was that we have ideas as to how to do it. But by discovering how others do it in different disciplines, how research comes in, or how people apply it in different ways, it's just helped us go further. And there's so many learnings that came out of it. That one, we're either now quoting it or we're putting it as part of our thinking. So-
[00:02:00] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:01] Jaycen: Yeah it was just such a cool journey.
[00:02:02] Garret: When you talk about the people we've talked to, what I got from these people is that it's a particular way of thinking, right? Like a mindset isn't just technique, it's how you approach something. And while there are specific practical things you can do to foster that way of thinking, if it changes the way you think or the way you do things, it's core to your existence. This is more about how we approach and how we think about everything, really.
[00:02:31] Hiromi: Yeah. Well let's talk about some of these guests. The first one was Bob Cormack and, Jason, you're probably the best suited to remind us of who Bob Cormack was. How did you-
[00:02:42] Jaycen: Oh, it was so long ago.
[00:02:43] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:02:44] Jaycen: Bob.
[00:02:44] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:02:45] Jaycen: Our- our first guest. But what a, what an amazing experience. Yeah we started off thinking about the challenges in B to B marketing and maybe converting someone. It looks like this mountain-like obstacle and Bob' story came to the surface. And he was willing to contribute, being an early summiter of Everest, the 57th person. I thought that's such an amazing thing to explore, like the challenge to doing it.
[00:03:08] Bob Cormack: You hear all the time, the south ridge of Everest is a walk up, right? You couldn't see anything downwind, 'cause the wind hits the mountain and then immediately carries it into a cloud. So you only can see halfway. It didn't look anything like the lower part of the mountain. Chris and I got up there, and all of a sudden here's this gnarly looking ridge, and huge cornices. And the wind is howling and it's 30 below. I'm thinking to myself, what happened to the walk up? There's like no stinking walk up.
[00:03:36] Hiromi: Yeah why was that noteworthy that he was 57th?
[00:03:40] Jaycen: I don't know, it just seems like now it's like a tourist thing, right? But like what Bob said, there's no stinking walkup. When he was doing it, he was a pioneer, really. So I think like that perspective, that's what made it fascinating. Sometimes we're doing things that we've never done before.
[00:03:57] Hiromi: Right.
[00:03:58] Jaycen: So like maybe there's that parallel where, we know where you wanna go and we're doing things that maybe very few have done before. But we're willing to take that risk.
[00:04:07] Garret: What stood out to me too about Bob's experience, we often think of it as the ultimate metaphor for human achievement is getting to the top of a mountain. And we often just think of the top. But as he's speaking and you're learning about everything that leads up to just getting to the bottom, that to me was so interesting and so applicable to business. All that leads up to it in the support and the teamwork just to get there was truly inspiring to me.
[00:04:37] Bob Cormack: Arlene Bloom and I came up behind him. We made sure the ladders over the crevasses were anchored and we strung, uh, hand ropes on them. And sometimes braced them because the longer ladders oscillate back and forth. I knew what it takes to get a good anchor in soft snow. It takes a lot of work, but that was what I wanted to do. Make sure people have safe routes. I knew that there had to be some people who were making things work. Who made things, uh, mesh smoothly. And so I tried to be one of those people.
[00:05:05] Hiromi: Yeah he was a very endearing personality because we can become accustomed to seeing people push others down, to rise to the top. So an underdog story like this is so satisfying, to see someone that really just wanted to climb. He didn't care about being at the top. He just wanted to contribute to the effort in general. And when he found himself at the top, he said, "The summit came as a surprise."
[00:05:32] Bob Cormack: The summit came as a surprise. I was so focused on this, doing this thing over and over. You walk up on the summit and went, "Wow, this is the summit of Everest." Who would have thought I'd ever be here? I never thought I'd ever be here. No one else ever did either. And I go, "Jesus, I gotta take some pictures and get the hell out of here." [laughs]
[00:06:03] Jaycen: Totally. He was in love with the work. His focus was just to support the team. Whatever needed to happen, and to me that spoke about the principle that we were exploring there about adaptability. There's a little bit of humility needed there to be willing to do whatever is needed, be willing to stretch a little bit. Just be willing to grow and adapt to the situation as it happens.
[00:06:24] Bob Cormack: I couldn't operate the camera with my mittens on. I's sewed cord into my mittens and- and so I had a cord around my wrist, so I couldn't lose the mittens, right? So I could just take them off and let them dangle. And I turned my back to the wind, take them off, get the camera set up. And I could shoot for about 20 seconds. Then I had to drop the camera, put my mittens on, get kind of feeling back in my hands. I did that about two, three times. Got some panoramic shots and stuff like that to prove we'd made the summit, you know?
[00:07:00] Hiromi: The next person we talked to was really an awesome privilege. We got to talk to Dudley Tal Stokes, who was the original bobsled driver from the Jamaican bobsled team that eventually inspired Cool Runnings, the movie.
[00:07:15] Speaker 5: We're looking for a sponsor for the first Jamaican bobsled team. [laughs]
[00:07:20] Speaker 6: Their dream was to compete in the Olympics.
[00:07:22] Hiromi: And I have to say, this was probably my favorite story that we did. So to get this as our second story was a big deal for me.
[00:07:32] Dudley Tal Stokes: By becoming very good at visualization, at getting into a state of deep mental relaxation and visualizing bobsled tracks and bobsled roads. Basic tenet is that the brain cannot differentiate between actually doing something and something that's vividly imagined from a condition of relaxation. And then going on to rehearse, I get-
[00:07:55] Garret: I remember sitting in an airport somewhere, when I listened to the first cut of this episode. And it was just so exciting to talk about something that was like folklore basically, through the late '80s and into the '90s. And this story, what I took away from it was the- the visualization process was a skill that he started using when he was just little. I mean it helped him at every point of his life.
[00:08:18] Dudley Tal Stokes: In my childhood, I did a lot of daydreaming and seeing different things. Allowing what was quite a vivid imagination to run wild. But I needed discipline in that imagination and training it to simulate reality in as much color as possible, that could enable visualization towards specific goals. Sitting in a simulator in Calgary learning to fly and just closing my eyes and imagining myself through all the maneuvers and changing that from a static simulator into a real moving machine. That prepared me for the kind of visualization that I would have to do in bobsled.
[00:08:57] Garret: It's something that he had to work at and had to develop like a muscle that you have to train. So for me, personally, in the presenting the communicating of ideas, at the beginning of this episode, I'm like how do I actually visualize, you know, putting yourself in the viewer, and the audience, and the client's shoes? And visualizing how they react to it, visualizing the objection. And then adapting the messaging to get it closer to where that audience needs it to be.
[00:09:28] Hiromi: Yeah. Tal was such a good sport. Our first interview was ruined because of some technical difficulties and he allowed us to do a second take. He did such a great job. I love his voice so much. But I could tell in the first interview that he was really interested in this concept of visualization. I wasn't really sure what to make of it myself. I have a- a little bit of a prejudice for certain types of, I don't know if you call them spiritual mindsets.
[00:09:57] Dudley Tal Stokes: There are two kinds of visualizations. Firstly, there's a view of the bigger picture. What you want to accomplish, where you want to go. And if we look at an Olympic cycle, a quad, it starts the moment you decide to go to the next Olympic games. You need to know where it is and what time it is. And you need to start seeing yourself there. Seeing yourself on the start block waiting to go. See yourself being successful at being at the Olympics. And then there is specific visualization, which is about execution. Whether you're going into a business meeting or you're going on a bobsled track. It's having firmly in your head what you want to accomplish from a state of deep mental relaxation, going over that plan time and time again.
[00:10:44] Hiromi: But it really clicked for me in doing some research when we found Patti Dobrowolski. And she was talking about the need for visualization when thinking about your future.
[00:10:56] Patti Dobrowolski: We live in a three dimensional world. But the light falls on the retina in two dimensional fashion. And the brain, it has to cope with it. So how does it deal with this extra dimension? It guesses. It guesses. And just as it can guess where your cup of coffee is when it goes to pick it up, it can correctly guess what the three bold steps are that you should-
[00:11:20] Hiromi: And I thought, well that's very practical. Our mind's capable of doing much more acting on what's not in our line of sight. And the truth is, in many cases, those are some of the most important decisions we make. And what maybe separates learners from masters in a discipline.
[00:11:38] Jaycen: Yeah this was something that we didn't consider before either. We're leading with achievers that had a story. Dudley had that story, and he starts bringing up this idea and this concept of visualization.
[00:11:53] Dudley Tal Stokes: Things became really quiet, at least in my mind. I sat there and watched the ice go by. Flash of white. And then I started thinking to myself, well, this is not right. This is not where we should be. This was just a disaster. How did I get here? How we going to make this different? And I remember about making a list, starting figuring it out in my mind. We all needed the resources, the [inaudible 00:12:25]. I just started visualizing and working through it. So for the first 10 seconds of the crash, I was trying to figure out how to survive and realizing that it wasn't going to happen. And the final 18 seconds was really spent mapping out what would turn out to be the next nine years of my life.
[00:12:51] Jaycen: This isn't something that we really considered as an account based mindset.
[00:12:56] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:57] Jaycen: But can this be something that we tap into more of? We had people that spoke to the neural science behind it, like Kevin Bailey.
[00:13:04] Kevin Bailey: Semiconscious and subconscious thoughts dominate the majority of our thinking about 95% of our thoughts, semiconscious subconscious, about 5% of our thoughts conscious. About 70% of our subconscious or semiconscious thoughts are disempowering or limiting in nature. So if you think about that-
[00:13:19] Jaycen: And it definitely alerted me to say, this is important. And this is something that we could employ more in our practice.
[00:13:27] Dudley Tal Stokes: I am going to find out what is necessarily to become good at this, and I'm going to become good. I had my head down, and all- all I could hear was my spikes crunching through the ice. I mean every step it was like amplified in my brain. And then I started to hear this cheering and I lift up my head a little bit. We walked, saw them right through the finish line. But the, but the crowd started cheering and waving. So, you know, the guys started cheering out in the back.
[00:14:07] Hiromi: Our next guest was Gregory Burns. You remember how you got introduced to Gregory, Jason?
[00:14:14] Jaycen: Yeah it was just meeting someone at an event, telling people about the pod. And someone says, "You know, I have someone in mind that I think would be a great story."
[00:14:23] Gregory Burns: Hi, I'm Gregory Burns. I'm an athlete-
[00:14:26] Jaycen: And what a, what an amazing story. I mean unreal.
[00:14:30] Hiromi: Yeah Gregory was such a great participant. Late nights from Singapore, just helping us to explore his past. And part of the reason why it took so much time for him and I to work together was that his story is so vast and sprawling.
[00:14:49] Gregory Burns: Here I was on a boat with an international crew of 10 people sailing from Tahiti basically to New Zealand, which took nine months. We were very slow. Making a 30 minute television documentary, meeting locals, asking them, "How do you dive for pearls? How do you, how do you grow taro? What are your courtship rituals?"
[00:15:09] Hello everybody, and welcome to Micronesia. Today, the Marco Polo is in the Republic of Palau. Now we have spent a lot of time in Polynesia and Melanesia.
[00:15:20] Hiromi: He has accomplished so much in his life. From being a visual artists, a para Olympian, an explorer, a filmmaker. He's competed in Ironman competitions with able bodied people all despite having lost the use of his legs.
[00:15:39] Jaycen: It's incredible, you know, this season we were exploring perseverance. And as we started to break down what he's achieved and who he is, it's like the piece about him as- as a kid and just getting up the stairs. And in the grocery store. That part was just so gut wrenching to hear that part of his story.
[00:15:58] Gregory Burns: And there was one times, I will never forget it. We were in the supermarket and somewhere between the Cheerios and the Pop Tarts, I fell down. And there I was on the floor, kind of squirming trying to get up. And the other shoppers I'm sure were just horrified that my mother would allow this poor little crippled kid to squirm on the floor and not immediately lift him up, and stand him up, and help him up. I don't remember looking to my mother to help me up. But I also recall the message from my mother was, you got this. You can go this. You're gonna have to do this when I'm gone so you better get used to it now.
[00:16:40] Jaycen: But those little bits of perseverance and him showing grit to get through it, informs what he did as an adult. All of those things are all intertwined as one. And you can't really separate it.
[00:16:53] Hiromi: Yeah. It's true. There is this theory that talent is the driver of success. I think that's been ingrained in us for so long that sometimes we don't challenge that assumption. But here Gregory not having many of the advantages that we all have, being able to accomplish so much really backs up what the research shows. Which is that natural ability alone can actually work against us.
[00:17:18] Carol Dweck: And our research showed telling people they're smart actually backfires. It makes them afraid of challenges, it makes them, uh, fold in the face of obstacles 'cause they're worried, oh does this not look smart? Am I not smart? The whole currency is built around smart.
[00:17:37] Hiromi: Professor Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth speaking on grit and the growth mindset really made me rethink my own potential. Am I fixed, or am I flexible in what I think I'm capable of?
[00:17:49] Angela Duckworth: If we only think about talent, then we maybe forget about effort and energy, about passion and perseverance. In my research, I find that grit and talent are hardly correlated at all. And sometimes they go in opposite directions so that somebody who's a little more able may be a little less gritty in certain samples.
[00:18:11] Garret: To me that whole idea speak to the genesis for this podcast as a whole. The ability to continue to grow and evolve. And are you willing to do that? And Gregory's superpower, maybe his advantage was that his situation necessitated that he has to grow and evolve maybe more than another person.
[00:18:30] Gregory Burns: Able bodied people, and that's really where I realized, listen, I'm not gonna win this. I'm here to complete, not compete. And to complete it is a win.
[00:18:39] Garret: If you chose that, though, if you chose that mindset, being willing to grow, and adapt, and persevere, and not limit yourself to what someone says you are, or says you're capable of, what then? What could happen for all of us? I appreciated our guest Stu Heinecke. He is the author of, Grow Your Business Like a Weed. He helped us to appreciate that weeds have unfair advantages. Something that allows them to thrive in difficult situations. Growing in the middle of a sidewalk. They can persevere in situations where other plants cannot.
[00:19:13] Stu Heinecke: It's a, there's a dandelion growing out of a crack and it's, we're used to seeing that. But there were no apple trees growing out of the crack. There were no petunias or rose bushes because those plants, they don't have what it takes to be a weed. Every weed doesn't do anything without unfair advantages. And so you see that in action in a lot of ways.
[00:19:31] Garret: And sometimes it's difficult to think about, what is your unfair ad- like what do you have that no one else has? And the reality is, what we have that no one else has is us. Our individuality is our unfair advantage, our unique selling proposition is us.
[00:19:46] Gregory Burns: And I kind of found my voice. And that started a 27-year-long swimming career in the para Olympics. So in the beginning, I think I tried to prove myself to others. And later in life was like, okay, I- I have to prove myself to myself.
[00:20:02] Hiromi: The next guest we had was in a slightly different vein. I've been a fan of Kishi Bashi for quite some time.
[00:20:09] Kishi Bashi: I'm Kishi Bashi.
[00:20:10] Hiromi: And I was excited that he responded and said he would be willing to have an interview with us and tell us a little bit about his story.
[00:20:18] Kishi Bashi: I think a lot of the focus of what I do is to blend art with history. To blend art, and songwriting, and storytelling to kind of connect people with difficult histories. You know, to like basically soften people's hearts with music. And then unload that difficult message so that it kind of stays.
[00:20:38] Hiromi: Since the last time I'd spoken to him, he had been working on a full length movie documentary about Japanese internment during World War II. And he really brought out this concept of empathy and how it changes his music.
[00:20:53] Kishi Bashi: I started to, um, to look into my own artistic expression as a voice for these feelings I was having. To be able to communicate these things to my listeners, my fans. So I started writing an album and I also started making a movie, a documentary movie.
[00:21:09] Jaycen: First of all, our family, we all became fans of his music as a result. So on Spotify has had four more listeners, which is absolutely wonderful. You know, I heard this interesting quote from Prince about how he considers creation as success. But as you listen to Kishi Bashi's story, what you realize is that he was trying too hard and has this preconceived idea what he wanted to be. But through listening to his audience, he truly found relevance.
[00:21:42] Kishi Bashi: My big break was like playing with Regina Spektor, I think. She's a pop artist. Really brilliant songwriter and she could just like halfway through the show, the band would leave, we would leave, and she'd just be solo. You know? And completely command the audience. People were like crying, and you know what I mean? And then next day like, oh, I wonder what they said about the show. You know? And I'd read the in the newspaper and one of the reviewers was like, "Oh I couldn't- couldn't wait for the band to leave and it's just me and Regina." You know? I was like, oh-
[00:22:14] Jaycen: That takes some humility, right? Especially in music?
[00:22:16] Hiromi: Yeah I really appreciated his honesty in recounting that early part of his career, how he observed other musicians that he was working with, like Of Montreal, Kevin Barnes, and Regina Spektor, touring with her. And observing how they interacted with this audiences, or why they created music. He allowed that to inform his own motive.
[00:22:38] Kishi Bashi: If you go about your life trying to write pop hits, it's such a struggle. You should just go about writing songs you feel great about. 'Cause what is popular? Popular means you're connecting with a lot of people. And the truer you are to emotion, the better chance you have at connecting with a lot of people and becoming popular.
[00:22:57] Hiromi: I feel like motive is a reoccurring theme in these accounts.
[00:23:00] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:01] Hiromi: That clearly people are drawn to sincerity and passion. Obviously that can have an application to our marketing efforts as well.
[00:23:09] Garret: 100%. I- I think maybe even more so in the B to B space if we start with listening. If we start with understanding what that person actually needs, what problems are they actually trying to solve? Talking to specific accounts, and what are their goals, and what are they after? And then coming with real value that's relevant to them.
[00:23:35] Kishi Bashi: I think the sustainable artists, the ones that can continue to make ideas that engage their audience and grow this audience is the ones that can survive. But even after like 10 years, it's really hard to have to keep reinventing myself. You could come up with a great formula of music that people appreciate and- and can connect with, but after a while it just kind of gets old. So like the general population is used to getting new things, so you have to keep changing. You have to keep pushing yourself to- to do something new.
[00:24:07] Hiromi: So next guest was Chris Do. And, you know, I had not heard of Chris Do before. But when he agreed to do an interview with me, I was just really honored because apparent, uh-
[00:24:24] Chris Do: In a former like I made commercials-
[00:24:26] Hiromi: ... he's kind of a big deal. [laughs]
[00:24:27] Chris Do: ... as a living. I try and teach the world to help them make a living-
[00:24:31] Hiromi: But he was a- a great participant. Just very earnest and honest in his retelling of his origin story. And where he came from, and the struggles that he had as an introvert. You could tell in speaking with him that he was just a very intelligent person. And perceptive. He told me about this one time that he was watching a monk on YouTube-
[00:24:57] Chris Do: He was speaking to this audience. I catch a piece of it, and just coincidentally, just at that moment, he asked the audience a rhetorical question. "Do you want to know how I'm not nervous standing up here talking to you?" And then he said, "It's because in my mind as I'm talking, I'm saying a prayer for you." It's like, what a beautiful sentiment. So this was like inverting the lens away from ourselves, our ego, being self centered, and turning it towards the audience which is, I'm here to serve. As a servant, how can I do wrong?
[00:25:34] Hiromi: And it changed his life and his approach because all he had to do was stop focusing on wanting to be the best speaker and start focusing on what his audience needed, and what his audience was thinking about. And that nervousness kind of went away. And he said that that really transformed the way he teaches, and approaches things.
[00:25:52] Chris Do: If you begin centered calm, energetic, and joyful with a spirit of generosity, the audience feels that. They're at ease. The smallest things that you do where you mess up, they'll go, "Aw, how cute. So funny, interesting. I like this person." And then you feel that, and they're generous. And then you're generous, and it goes the other direction.
[00:26:12] Garret: We often think about what we do as marketers, as communicating, messaging, that's how we speak about it. But hearing Chris talk about his dad and his experiences as an actual teacher at art schools. You know, teaching means you're invested in your listener's growth. You know? And taking that stance of teaching, providing value, being invested in someone's growth is greater than, in my mind, uh, selling a product.
[00:26:40] Hiromi: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:41] Jaycen: I think too like it's cool that through the process of teaching, he discovered he has something of value. 'Cause he had a little bit of displacement seeing the kids coming out of school and he's like, I'm gonna be replaced, you know? Right, like-
[00:26:52] Garret: Yeah.
[00:26:53] Jaycen: And, uh, but then seeing what value he really had.
[00:26:57] Chris Do: All right of a sudden I'd feel myself coming alive. And they're helping to rebuild me, unbeknownst to them. Pebble by pebble, piece by piece. I'm going to be a new person. So that semester I came back full of energy. Not because I needed three months off, but because the gift the students gave me. And so that's why I love teaching so much. One, I've been the beneficiary of it. Two, in orders of magnitude more, I found my self confidence, my voice, my self worth through teaching.
[00:27:34] Jaycen: And I was just thinking, from our perspective, what is the value that we can offer to others? And how do we involve others in the process?
[00:27:42] Garret: Emily Foley, our guest on 19, has this ratio-
[00:27:46] Emily Foley: And it is 80/20. It's 80% listening, and 20% of us talking. I think that we need to apply that so much more.
[00:27:56] Garret: And that speaks to that idea of that teaching is about involvement. And to the degree we can get them involved and engaged, and doing something that will show up in the growth of the audience, of the student, of the target market.
[00:28:11] Chris Do: I'm 50 years old, and I'm still as motivated, as energized today, even more so, than I was when I was 22 years old. Thank you very much [inaudible 00:28:22]. I get to touch the lives of people that I most likely will never meet in real life, before my time is up here on earth. And I think there's something wonderful, and beautiful about that. I get to live my purpose every single day. Okay. Some of you guys...
[00:28:41] Hiromi: After Chris Do's story, we started introducing more bite sized stories from marketers.
[00:28:49] Garret: Lauren Madrid from AWS, I think as she was speaking it was like PTSD of all the challenges marketers face internally, externally about just getting alignment.
[00:29:06] Lauren Madrid: You'll send an email out and get crickets. What does everyone think about ABC? You might get zero opinions. Radio silence. And then you send an email like, okay, great we're gonna go with A. And then all of a sudden you get these opinions coming out of the woodwork. So sometimes you just gotta put the straw man out there so people can start raising their hand and saying, "I don't like it, this is a terrible idea. I don't wanna do it." Great, awesome. So B it is, then. Neat. I knew you had opinions. [laughs] I'm glad I could poke you enough to make you tell me.
[00:29:42] Garret: And I think this is a recurring theme too in all these episodes, having the humility to understand where somebody else is coming from and maybe take that into account, shift a little bit, be a little bit adaptable, persevere together. Just so we can get that alignment and move forward together.
[00:29:59] Hiromi: Yeah, exactly. The humility to offer up ideas knowing that they might be criticized or broken down. All we can do to make progress sometimes, especially in an enterprise environment.
[00:30:12] Garret: And that sultry music was just delightful. [laughs] I like the perspective too that you can be called under the table, so to speak. But being willing to try, being willing to fail, and knowing it's not the end of the world.
[00:30:27] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:30:28] Garret: Right? I mean these aren't life and death situations, so having that humility about us.
[00:30:33] Hiromi: For Bob it is.
[00:30:34] Garret: Yeah, for Bob. He was like the only one.
[00:30:39] Lauren Madrid: I try to think of like future Lauren, she's not gonna remember this at all. So present Lauren should just let it go. [laughs]
[00:30:49] Garret: I just have to say, personally, Scott Aren in 22, I had no idea about Scott previous. But we had the interview, we heard his story. And just to see the parallels, personally-
[00:31:00] Scott Aaron: Six months ago, I found this letter that my dad wrote me from prison. And he wrote a lot of things in this letter. But the one thing that he did almost highlight is he said, "Son, you asked me how am I supposed to be you? How am I supposed to do things as you?" And he said, "You're not. You need to be yourself. You need to let people fall in love with who you are, not with who you're trying to be." And that really stuck with me because I was resisting being myself, wanting to be liked and appreciated. It kind of gave me this sense of clarity but also comfort knowing that I could just be myself, I didn't have to be my dad.
[00:31:46] Garret: And my takeaway from that was how often do I actually share an experience with someone, hearing other people's stories and then understanding how your story fits in with their story? Maybe that's the whole idea behind this whole thing. The stories are what endears us to people. The stories are what helps us understand and telling stories is maybe a lost art.
[00:32:12] Jaycen: That's a good point though, Garret. Because looking back again, part of what we set out to do was discover the mindset. But the format was important.
[00:32:21] Garret: Yeah.
[00:32:21] Jaycen: Right? Like how we consider this of being able to unpack the stories and through the process too, around what you and Robbie have developed in how to pull the story out. Like just the stories, that's so powerful.
[00:32:36] Garret: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:36] Jaycen: Because you personally apply so many different things. It's not only what binds us, it moves us, it teaches us. And then we don't forget these stories.
[00:32:46] Hiromi: If you were to consider what all these guests have in common, do you see some stand out threads?
[00:32:52] Garret: The show is about achievement, and reaching, and things that people have done, and what moves them to be able to do that. And it seems like, for me, the thread is the humility to grow. And the reason why I say that is because you've gotta be a little bit willing to risk embarrassment, you've gotta be willing to stretch like a pair of pants. But the goal, the motive is the growth.
[00:33:21] Hiromi: Yeah I totally agree. What stood out to me was humility throughout all this. And I think what's interesting about that is that in our culture, humility is often seen as a weakness, and yet it's really been the deciding factor in many of these participant's success.
[00:33:38] Garret: I agree.
[00:33:38] Jaycen: Uh, I wrote down learner. Which, to me, that's what that means. You know, willing to learn. And to be willing to learn you have to be humble, you have to be willing to accept that you don't know everything. You've gotta be willing to accept failure. You gotta put yourself out there to be vulnerable and try. So thinking about this from a marketing standpoint, are we willing to stretch for the sake of who we seek to reach, and connect, and communicate with?
[00:34:04] Hiromi: Well thanks to all of you who've joined us so far in this journey. If you got something out of it, or if you have feedback on how to make it better, we'd love a review on Apple Podcasts. Keep sending us those ideas. And we can't wait to see you next time on Reach.
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